Drought threatens region's way of life

Boating ramps are closed all across Lake Lahontan. Low water levels at the lake make boating impossible in some areas. However, rangers say there is still enough water for fishing and swimming at other areas of the lake. Lake Lahontan has suffered two consecutive years of low water levels, resulting in a 90 percent reduction in boating activity.(Photo: Submitted photo)

Three years of dismal winters and hot summers are taking their toll across a normally arid but now exceedingly dry landscape, with western Nevada rated by experts as being in extreme or exceptional drought.

Water supplies are diminishing. For the first time in 20 years, Truckee River flows are expected by early August to drop to such levels that the major water provider serving the Truckee Meadows will need to tap reserve supplies. Lake Tahoe likely will drop below its natural rim sometime in September, the first time in a decade that's happened so early in the year.

According to information from the U.S. Geological Survey, flows in the East Walker River near Bridgeport were 92 cubic-feet per second as of July 8, while the West Walker River near Coleville was flowing at 69 cubic-feet per second. The Walker River near Mason was flowing at 20 feet per second.

Bridgeport Reservoir held 5,640 acre feet of water as of July 8, out of a capacity of 42,500 acre-feet, while Topaz, which can hold 59,439 acre-feet, had 4,190 acre feet.

On the Carson River system, flows were 76 cubic-feet per second below Markleeville, 17 CFS near Carson City amd 0.80 cubic-feet per second at Fort Churchill. Lahontan Reservoir held 34,270 acre-feet of water, only about 13 percent of its capacity of 312,000 acre-feet.

Farmers and ranchers struggle to maintain a livelihood. Wild animals wander in a stressful search for food and water. Boat ramps go dry and the danger of destructive wildfires — which now exists year-round — increases with each passing day of summer.

Droughts have happened before, of course, and many are comparing the current situation to the lengthy one experienced across the region from 1987 to 1994. Others say this particular drought stands out as especially severe.

"It's horrible," said Bennie Hodges of the Pershing County Water Conservation District. Farmers in the Lovelock area are receiving zero irrigation water from a dry Humboldt River this year.

"I can't see on records where we've had a year this bad," Hodges said. "Some of the old-timers are talking to other old timers and say they've had years this bad, but I can't find one."

Drought has forced Gardnerville rancher David Hussman to cut the size of his cattle herd by 10 percent, a move he was loath to make considering today's soaring beef prices. He just didn't have a choice. Hussman is making his first alfalfa cut of the year and doubts there will be another. Buying the stuff to feed his cattle is too expensive.

To him, this drought seems similar to the one that withered the region in 1976-77 but still seems distinct in its severity. "I don't think we've had any three years as severe as this," Hussman said. "I hesitate to say it's historic, but it sure is severe, there's no question."

Three dismal winters

After the previous two winters produced mountain snowpacks barely more than half that of a normal winter, many hoped the winter of 2013-14 would pack a wallop and turn things around.

It did anything but. December and January were nearly completely dry. Storms in February helped, but the snow deficit was simply too large to overcome.

On April 1, when the snowpack is typically at its peak, it measured only 48 percent of normal in the Walker River Basin.

Low precipitation was accompanied by high temperatures. Beau Uriona, a snow surveyor with the U.S. Natural Resources Conservation Service, reported that peaks at 10,000 feet or more in elevation had the most days with above-average temperatures than any other year in 24 years on record.

Speaking at a climate conference in Reno in April, Uriona said the high-elevation snowpack was already poised to melt at that early date. He described the situation as "a worst-case scenario."

Everything combined to make for less runoff flowing into area rivers, streams and reservoirs. Much of what snowmelt did flow off the hills immediately soaked into parched soil, never making it to lakes or reservoirs where water might be stored for later use.

"Not only was it one of the driest years we've ever had but it's the third very dry year in a row, and that just compounds all the issues," said Federal Water Master Chad Blanchard, who is charged with regulating the flow of the Truckee River. "This is something we haven't seen since 1994."

That year, Lake Tahoe dropped to 2 feet below its natural rim. In mid-June, the Truckee River dried up between central Reno and Sparks; it took discharge from the wastewater treatment plant to get the river flowing again.

Droughts of a year or two are relatively common, but when they extend to a third year or beyond, it "really hits hard," said Douglas Boyle, Nevada's state climatologist.

What's to blame?

"It gets pretty grim pretty quickly," Boyle said, adding that the situation is compounded by an increase in annual average temperatures in the region of 1 to 1.5 degrees in recent years compared to what was recorded from 1980 to 2010.

"There's a double whammy. We don't have the precipitation we expect, and the temperatures have been warmer," Boyle said. "We have those two things happening at the same time, which is problematic."

Is human-caused global warming to blame? Boyle and other experts said that's unknown. Greenhouse gas emissions appear plainly tied to rising global temperatures, but how that affects the weather, including individual droughts, is another question.

Kelly Redmond of the Western Regional Climate Center in Reno said that, if anything, models suggest that more winter precipitation, not less, might be expected to accompany a warming climate. What changes is the type of precipitation, with more in this area falling as rain rather than snow.

"It seems to show more precipitation in the winter months sort of at the expense of the other months," Redmond said. "But that really didn't happen this year."

So what did happen this year and, for that matter, during the previous two?

That answer is a little more simple. Boyle points to an "enormous" ridge of high pressure that stayed parked off the California coast at a time when winter storms should normally hit the West with rain and snow. This high pressure shunted off storms to the north like a big offensive lineman blocking the rush of an opposing player in football, leaving western Nevada and Northern California high and dry.

"That's what's been happening. It's been pretty persistent and pretty strong. We're not seeing the storm track in our area like we expect it to be," Boyle said. "We're taking a look at that and are trying to determine how often this happens. What's normal and what's not normal?"

Whether the situation is normal or not, it plainly presents a problem. After three years of drought, some are wondering what it will take to emerge into normal situation again.

El Niño and atmospheric rivers

Much hope has recently been focused on the expected arrival of El Niño, a weather phenomenon associated with warmer-than-average surface water temperatures in the ocean off the west coast of South America. Strong El Niños have produced some big winters in Nevada and California in the past.

El Niño offers no guarantee, said Michael Dettinger, a research hydrologist at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in San Diego.

"El Niño doesn't really guarantee a wet winter," Dettinger said. "They are a really good way to get a wet winter, but they can produce some dry ones as well. At this point, I think we keep our fingers crossed."

Dettinger's research does, however, offer some hope. A 2013 study he conducted examined the effect of so-called "atmospheric rivers" on ending previous droughts. Atmospheric rivers are corridors of water vapor stretching west into the Pacific that often carry strong winter storms into the West, sometimes for weeks at a time.

The study concluded that atmospheric rivers played a "critical role as a common cause of the end of droughts on the West Coast," with those droughts tending to end abruptly during an especially wet month bringing several very large storms.

Between 1950 and 2010, 33 to 74 percent of droughts were broken by the landfall of atmospheric river storms, Dettinger's study concluded.

"Droughts have almost always begun very gradually but we can get out of them with a single, very wet month," Dettinger said.

It may take a little more this time around, he said.

"This isn't your typical drought. With this one, we're deep enough into it, it's going to take quite a sustained wet winter," Dettinger said. "It's going to take a sustained string of very wet weather to get us out of this."

In Lovelock, Bennie Hodges doesn't like to think of the potential consequences should the drought extend for a fourth year or beyond.

"A lot of people would be closing doors. A lot of us could be out of jobs," Hodges said. "It could be catastrophic."